Breaking Up MCPS

There are some aspects of our life that are so ingrained in our consciousness that we don’t even question them. One of them is the boundary for “Montgomery County Public Schools.” The school district’s boundary coincides with the county’s boundary, so there is only one public school system for the entire county. Is that really necessary? How common is it for an entire county to have one school district? What are the benefits of smaller school districts? Lastly, is there any disadvantage to dividing MCPS into smaller districts?

There are many counties that have independent school districts. Within Los Angeles County, the cities of Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale, Redondo Beach, and several others have their own school districts. Cook County (Chicago) has dozens of school districts. Nasau County (New York) also has dozens of school districts, none of them having more than 10 schools. The same goes for Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley), San Diego County, and many counties the size of ours. In terms of precedent, there is no requirement that Montgomery County have one school district.

There is solid evidence that smaller school districts have better performance. At the end of this post is a list of Niche’s 15 highest performing public school districts. None of those 15 school districts have more than four high schools, and fully 13 of them have no more than two high schools. I had to scroll down to 86th-ranked Irvine Unified School District (Orange County, CA) to discover the first school district with more than four high schools. I had to scroll down to 984th-ranked San Diego Unified School district to find a district with 11 or more high schools. This observation proves, at a minimum, that you can have a high-performing school district that is very small. A large school district guaranteeing high performance is an open question.

One objection to small school districts is exclusion of disadvantaged students. Below is the boundary line for Niche’s top-ranked Adlai E. Stevenson High School District in suburban Chicago. Given the serpentine course of that boundary, there is reason to believe that some unpleasant conversations took place in determining who’s in and who’s out. If a group of parents can design their own school district, they will be rewarded with a winning school.

Can we say that MCPS does not suffer from serpentine boundary lines? Below is the boundary for the Wootton High School cluster.

The area near the Rio shopping center is included in this cluster, even though Gaithersburg High school is closer. Looking at the MCPS map viewer, you can see other examples of disjoint clusters, giving favor to some and exclusion to others.

We see from these observations that a) small school districts can have better outcomes; b) exclusion is just as prevalent here as it is anywhere else.

The most important benefit of breaking up MCPS is denying a seven-member board of education the favor of determining everything for everybody. No matter what your personal stand is on forced LGBT studies or DEI, we have solid evidence that the school system is in decline, the scandals never stop, and the corruption and nepotism goes rewarded instead of punished. Breaking up MCPS gives residents more say into policy, and hampers favoritism and bloated administration payrolls.

The following table summarizes Niche’s 15 top school districts

Related posts:

Should Board of Education Positions Be Full Time? Selective “Ranking” Promotion by County Politicians – Why Not Show the Whole Truth of How MoCo and MD “Stack Up”? MCPS Board of Education: MoCo’s most illegitimate governing body